UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31: The UN Security Council on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution calling upon Syria to cooperate with a UN investigation into the death of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri or face possible sanctions.
The resolution was adopted 15-0 after the United States and France agreed to requests by China, Russia and Algeria to delete a specific reference to economic sanctions. Instead the resolution would consider possible unspecified ‘further action’ if Syria did not comply.
Ten foreign ministers or their deputies from the 15 Security Council members travelled to New York for the meeting, underlying the importance of the vote.
The resolution urges Syria to cooperate ‘unconditionally’ with a UN probe into the Feb 14 assassination of Rafik Hariri and orders Damascus to take into custody and make available to UN investigators people suspected of involvement in the killing.
It also calls for a financial freeze and travel ban on individual suspects to be named by a UN commission, headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, or the Lebanese government. But any Security Council member can object to a name on such a list.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cast the American vote in the Security Council and has sought to isolate Syria over the past year because of Lebanon. And she has accused Damascus of allowing foreign fighters to cross its border into Iraq.
Ms Rice told the council that Syria had been put on notice by the international community that it must cooperate with the inquiry by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.
“With our decision today, we show that Syria has isolated itself from the international community — through its false statements, its support for terrorism, its interference in the affairs of its neighbours, and its destabilizing behaviour in the Middle East,” Ms Rice said. “Now, the Syrian government must make a strategic decision to fundamentally change its behaviour.”
“The Chapter VII resolution that we are passing today is the only way to compel the Syrian government to accept the just demands of the United Nations and to cooperate fully with the Mehlis investigation,” she said.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the Security Council was ‘putting the government of Syria on notice that our patience has limits’.
“The people of Lebanon have become all too acquainted with grief,” he said. “We owe them a better future, and this resolution is one way of providing them with that better future.”
France’s Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy stressed that the resolution had one aim: ‘the truth, the whole truth about Rafik Hariri’s assassination in order that those responsible for it answer for their crime’.
By adopting the resolution, he said, the council showed solidarity with Lebanon, support for the Mehlis commission’s work which has been extended until Dec 15, and demanded ‘firm and urgent cooperation’from Syria.
